“I didn’t know Maud was a virgin,” I told Nora, as I had told my mom. Nora knew Maud and I were friends.

“I know about first-timers,” Nora told me. “I’ve been with girls who haven’t done it. You don’t have any idea what’ll happen when they do it. But I’ve never been with a girl in a cast,” Nora admitted. She paused. “Your mother said Maud clubbed you with her cast—she said Maud beat the shit out of you,” Nora told me.

“Maud got me mostly in my face. She never meant to hurt me,” I explained. “Maud was just flailing around. She was basically out of control with a cast on her arm.”

“I can picture it,” Nora assured me. “It could happen to anyone.” She paused again. “I guess the only good thing—I mean, about those musicals in the fifties and sixties—is that they were safe for virgins.”

“I didn’t take Maud to West Side Story,” I said.

“I don’t blame you,” Nora immediately said. “With her cast, Maud wasn’t safe to take anywhere!”

“I never took Sophie to a musical, either,” I volunteered quietly.

“Jesus Mary Josephine—poor Sophie!” Nora exclaimed. “She was your first writer girlfriend, wasn’t she?”

“My first writer girlfriend,” I repeated sadly.

“All the bleeding!” Nora cried. “It never stopped, did it? A writer who has her period all the time—that’s got to be depressing!”

“Sophie was never in the mood for a musical,” I admitted.

“The story of a nonstop bleeder is not likely to be adapted as a musical,” Nora pointed out. “Fibroids, the musical! I don’t see it happening.”

“My mom still talks about the wear and tear on the washing machine, all our sheets and towels—occasionally, even our pillowcases,” I told Nora.

“You know Ray still calls Sophie ‘the bleeder,’ don’t you?” Nora asked me.

“I know, Nora.”

“Your mom’s not into musicals, is she?” Nora asked me, at last changing the subject from my unfortunate girlfriends—if only “the early ones,” as Nora had called them.

“No, Ray doesn’t give a hoot about musicals,” I said.

My mom was a Hitchcock fan. She loved Westerns and war movies, too. My grandmother and Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha were enthralled by the “big-band sound”; my mother wasn’t. While Nana and my aunts were watching The Glenn Miller Story and The Benny Goodman Story, my mom and I saw (and loved) High Noon, Stalag 17, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, The Searchers, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

My mother and I were sad when James Dean was killed in a car crash in 1955—“He was barely ten years older than you!” my mom exclaimed, hugging me. But regarding James Dean’s movies, Little Ray was equivocal. “I wouldn’t watch East of Eden or Giant again—Rebel Without a Cause, sure,” my mom said.